Fertility rates buck a longtime trend

Conservatives have been lamenting both low fertility in America and the fact that poorer women are having most of the babies. But a closer look at the data shows that fertility among more educated women in rising, says Philip Cohen in The Atlantic.

J.D.: Actually, the Times Union is correct. If you listen to Rush, Hannity, and particularly Huckabee on this issue, as I do, you will note that they have stated on many occasions that they blame a supposed low American fertility rate of the educated classes on the right to a legal abortion – with the implication being that if abortion was illegal, America’s bith rate amoung the literatti would be higher than it is – and therefore fewer so-called “low-information” voters who did not vote the way Hannity and Rush wanted them too.

Obviously no one label fits all. But it is more than a tickle disingenuous to ignore all the bleating in recent years about coming the end of America as a “white country”, and the sheep were definitely not liberals.

realist: And it’s so nice of men to tell women when, how and where to have babies, based on men’s needs for cheap labor and fodder for the military. What conservatives DON’T get is that, in a free society, you can’t intimidate, legislate, beat, rape and force women into having children they SIMPLY DON’T WANT (not as long as there are coat hangers). If you want women to have more children, then fork over with the Franch-style benefits, baby. None of this “drop the baby in the field and keep on plowing” garbage. Yeah, I can hear it now, “what a sense of entitlement,” blah, blah, blah (which, of course, doesn’t take into account the sense of entitlement men have when it comes to the products of women’s wombs). However, if women want something in return for undergoing something they don’t want, it’s not “entitlement” — it’s just good negotiating.

Another example of the low-information media. I have never heard a conservative “lament” that poorer women are having most of the babies. If anyone can find a quote (an actual quote from a conservative) to the contrary, I’d love to see it.

Realist: You’re so right about leftist projection. How many of them do you think are aware that the only group to seriously “lament” the high birth rate of the poor and to actually organize a movement to address what they viewed as a problem were the progressives? Margaret Sanger? Leader of the birth control movement? Founder of Planned Parenthood? She was a very strong supporter of Eugenics and believed that birth control should be used to “assist the race toward the elimination of the unfit.”